Disruptions of 911 and other emergency services were reported in at least three parts of California on Thursday, including Oakland, Riverside County (east of Los Angeles), and Santa Barbara County on the central coast.
Oakland
The Oakland Police Department posted a notice to Facebook on Thursday that its Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system froze and displayed an error message around 8:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday. All 911 calls were transferred to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, and dispatchers have been relocated to a local fire dispatch station.
“We are responding only to Priority One calls,” the Oakland PD wrote on Facebook. “The City of Oakland’s IT department is working with AT&T to restore internet and phone services.”
Santa Barbara
The 911 outages appear to be impacting AT&T and T-Mobile customers in Santa Barbara, according to local news outlet KEYT, though it’s yet unclear if other mobile carriers are seeing issues.
The Santa Barbara Police Department wrote on Facebook: “If you are unable to reach 911, please call the Santa Barbara Police Department’s 24/7 Dispatch Center directly at 805-882-8900 for emergency assistance.” Text-to-911 doesn’t appear to be impacted.
Riverside County
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office posted a notice to its website on Thursday that it was affecting “some cellular users’ ability” to call 911. Anyone trying to call 911 in Riverside County who’s unable to get through is being encouraged to dial 951-776-1078.
Gizmodo called the non-emergency line for the Riverside County Sheriff and was greeted by an AI agent that eventually directed us to a human. The human confirmed that “there’s issues” with the 911 service but “it’s not completely out.” We were then given a number for the press office but were warned it was a pager service.
After calling the number, we were prompted to “enter a numeric message,” and we entered our phone number with the hopes of hearing back. Eventually, we got a call back, and the public information officer said they weren’t sure about what cellular services were being impacted but asked that we send him an email so that he could reply with a public statement.
All of this is to say that modern life is a mess of systems, some supposedly modern like AI, with others archaic and confusing, leading to more steps for everyone involved.
Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office told Gizmodo:
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office learned of the outage earlier this morning. It is unknown what caused the outage on the cellular service provider’s network or how long it will last. Some cell phone users in Riverside County are still able to dial 9-1-1 as the law enforcement telecommunications side of the network continues to function normally.
Black October connection?
It’s unclear if the outages have anything to do with what’s being called in the cybersecurity community Black October, and the vulnerabilities in PHP discovered earlier this week. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince tweeted Wednesday that there have been “millions” of attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities.
T-Mobile didn’t immediately respond to questions emailed Thursday about the outages. AT&T blamed the outage on damage to the fiber infrastructure of an unnamed provider.
“Damage to another provider’s fiber, potentially linked to theft, is affecting 9-1-1 call routing for some AT&T mobility customers in the Los Angeles area,” a spokesperson for the company said. “We understand the importance of reliable emergency service access, and our teams remain engaged as restoration work continues.”
It’s unclear if the disruption in the L.A. area has anything to do with the problems in Oakland, which is about 400 miles north.
Don’t Test 911
Officials in Santa Barbara are urging residents not to call 911 or the other emergency numbers if they’re not experiencing an emergency.
“Please do not call 911 to test the outage,” the public information officer for Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office tweeted on Thursday. “Even if your call doesn’t connect, our dispatchers may still receive your number and must call you back.”
“These unnecessary callbacks take valuable time away from responding to emergencies,” the tweet continued. “Please keep 911 lines clear.”
Updated 2:30 p.m. ET with comment from an AT&T spokesperson.
